Saturday, October 23, 2010

There are just some days when I really do believe that the hyenas just have it in for us. We recently misplaced one of our clans - Serena North - and went on a few obs sessions either seeing no hyenas or seeing only a couple that were sacked out and clearly had no desire to get up from their R&R to conveniently lead us to their new den.

What made it worse was that we had been hearing REALLY close hyena whooping each night, indisputably belonging to our Northies (our campsite is located right in North clan territory). So, each night and morning we would head out falsely believing that THIS was the time we would find our hyenas again.

The photo below is documentation of how utterly annoying the fisi can be at times. I took this photo on one of those disappointing obs sessions in North where we found a hyena or two but much to our despair, no den. I urge you to find the hyena in the picture, although it shouldn't be too bad considering I fussed with the contrast to make it stand out more (click on it for full size). This photo is also proof of how hyenas seem to defy the laws of physics. The hyena in the photo is Waffles (WAFL); she is an adult female, has 2 young cubs (Hungry Jack and Log Cabin), and is by no means a small hyena. How she managed to lie so flat on the ground behind a couple stalks of grass is beyond me.

With cases like this, it becomes no surprise to me how easily we can lose our hyenas. We could have easily driven past her and not even noticed. And there's hardly even grass on the ground, thanks to the wildebeest. I'm not excited for the time when the wildes are gone and all the grass grows back; I think I'm going to need to develop a hyena-spotting super power!

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